The Khao Yai national park is reachable from Bangkok or Ayutthaya by train or by minivan. It's a national park with some beautiful waterfalls and a lot of wildlife. But the park is so big that it's not so easy to spot the wildlife. The things you will probably see are monkeys and big deer since they are almost everywhere, even at the road where you will drive.
The most popular animals are elephants and hornbills but these two are more complicated to spot. We were lucky to see the latest one but for the elephants we only saw their droppings.
Important things to know before going, a Khao Yai National Park Guide From 2023 on
Price / How can you visit it? There are mainly 4 options, one is by doing a day tour from Bangkok (120€), another one is by hiring a private driver (between 4500 and 7000 THB per person per day), renting your own car (1200 THB per day) plus paying the park fee (400 THB per person + 30 THB per car) or renting a motorbike (300 THB per day) plus the park fee.
Almost no English at the information center + information on the website is not clear: It's difficult to get useful information at the website of the national park. They say the park closes at 18h but it's not true! It's only the last entrance to the park. You can leave later. There is even the option of doing a Night Safari at 19h or at 20h for 1h costing 600 per car. We've heard that very often you don't see any animal since there are quite a lot of cars searching for animals for 1h and they are noisy and with many lights so the animals of course go away from that.
Opening hours: The park is open for entrance from 6 AM to 6 PM but you can stay longer than that if you do any activities inside and leave after 6 PM.
We saw quite a lot of monkeys and some deer, especially near the parking place. The monkeys are a bit aggressive searching for food as soon as you leave your car with food. So you should be careful not to bring food anywhere when you go for hikes.
Apart from the monkeys, the park has beautiful waterfalls.
You can also encounter huge deer everywhere, even close to where people are camping!
The national park has also opportunities for nice views such as this 15 min walk at Pha Diao Dai cliffs
or this lake by sunset
Sometimes the monkeys try to enter into your rental cars...
and some times they just have fun in the middle of the road :D
to make these cute little baby monkeys
We were quite lucky to see a hornbill as well!
I hope you liked our post :D The next posts are going to be more about diving and snorkeling at Thai islands!